The images lie in our collective imagination. There’s the airport terminal, the passengers lined up silently at its windows, the somber ceremony with the flag-draped casket outside.

This scene, sheltered from the news photographers who might have captured it, was movingly described in a letter that appeared last week in this newspaper. Bret Dalton, who flew here on business, wrote of his seatmates’ discovery on March 13. Just as they approached Spokane, their pilot announced they’d been flying with the body of Army Spec. Ryan Bell, of Colville, returning from Iraq.

The stunned passengers reacted instinctively. They fell silent, and once they walked off the plane, they delayed their own homecomings to file solemnly over to the airport’s large windows. There they stood with respect to watch the military honor guard carefully lift Bell’s casket and place it in the waiting hearse.

Dalton’s eloquent recounting of the tale reminds us of this dark truth: We Americans remain all too sheltered from the realities of the Iraq war.

We can be grateful that our lives haven’t been painfully disrupted – beyond remembering to wear easily removable shoes or bring a Ziploc bag to the airport. Yet we know there’s something deeply out of whack about a war with no real home front. We shop, we eat and we drive through our days largely unscathed.

That was not the case during World War II.

As America’s supplies were diverted to the war, the government rationed everything from typewriters to gasoline to sugar. When the nation’s rubber imports were cut off, Americans were asked to drive no more than 35 miles an hour to save their tires. Women’s nightgowns were shortened and ruffles forbidden. Even babies needed rationing books.

Civilians also volunteered with the Red Cross, took factory jobs the soldiers left behind, and planted Victory gardens.

Their view of that war was limited by the technology of the era rather than today’s government policy. Images of the war dead, though edited to convey bodies with dignity, appeared widely, writes Tufts University sociologist Paul Joseph. The public was trusted to accept and withstand these images, so strong was the nation’s confidence that its cause was right.

That’s not the case today. The Pentagon banned photographs of coffins returning through Dover Air Force Base during the Persian Gulf War, a policy that has continued. The Bush administration in 2003 limited news coverage of “deceased military personnel” traveling to U.S. air bases.

Americans see relatively few images of injured soldiers or flag-draped caskets these days. We struggle, unless we have a family member heading to Iraq, to comprehend the consequences of this heartbreaking war.

That’s because the administration knows the basis for this war has always been shaky. Were Americans asked to pay more taxes, to undergo a military draft, to watch each flag-draped coffin arrive home, our support of this war would slip even further.

The return of Spec. Ryan Bell reminds the people of our region of this war’s deep price. Now, our imagination calls us to weigh its worth.